By Louis Jacobson
PoliticsPA contributing writer

For Republicans – who desperately need to do well in Pennsylvania to have a shot at taking over the House this fall – primary night 2010 was at best a mixed bag.

On the upside, they find themselves with an untainted candidate to challenge Rep. Jason Altmire and a strong nominee against Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy.

On the downside, their nominees against Democratic Reps. Kathy Dahlkemper, Chris Carney and Tim Holden limped out of multi-candidate primaries with narrow victories and depleted campaign treasuries.

Perhaps the best news of the night for the GOP was that Keith Rothfus defeated Mary Beth Buchanan for the right to challenge Altmire in the 4th District, which includes areas north of Pittsburgh, including the Beaver Valley.

Rothfus, an attorney from Allegheny County, is a virtual unknown – but that’s still an improvement over Buchanan, whose early promise as a former U.S. Attorney crumbled amid inadvisable comments and staff turmoil. Rothfus ended up winning by a 2-to-1 margin – a result unimaginable a few months ago.

Across the state, in the Bucks County-based 8th District, former GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick held off a multi-candidate primary field to win the right to take on Murphy. While this seat is somewhat less vulnerable than other Democratic-held districts, Fitzpatrick is just about the strongest candidate the GOP could have nominated, and his victory assures a strong GOP effort this fall.

But in other districts, the primary night results didn’t give Republicans much momentum going into the general election campaign.

In Dahlkemper’s Erie-based 3rd District, a contest that seesawed more than once on election night finally went to Butler County Republican Mike Kelly. Kelly won just 28 percent in the multi-candidate field, slightly ahead of Crawford County businessman Paul Huber with 26 percent.

While Dahlkemper is one of the state’s most vulnerable incumbents, none of the GOP candidates came into the primary as an especially strong challenger, and Kelly’s narrow victory means he’ll have to mend fences after the election. He’ll also have to replenish his bank accounts after the hard-fought primary.

In Carney’s 10th District in northeast Pennsylvania, the Republicans ended up with former U.S. attorney Tom Marino, who won 42 percent of the vote against businessman Dave Madeira, with 32 percent, and Snyder County Commissioner Malcolm Derk, with 27 percent.

Though the district is strongly Republican, Carney has taken a moderate approach and is credited with securing his position well. By contrast, Marino has faced continued questions about his ties to controversial local businessman Louis DeNaples.

And in the similarly GOP-leaning 17th District held by Holden, state Sen. Dave Argall won the primary, but despite high name identification, he prevailed by an unimpressive 1.4 percentage points in a four-way primary. Like Kelly and Marino, Argall will need to overcome a major money disadvantage against the Democratic incumbent.

In the other two competitive primaries, 13-term Democratic Rep. Paul Kanjorski staved off a challenge from Lackawanna County commissioner Corey O’Brien, 49-34 percent. But the harder part comes in the fall when Kanjorski faces Hazelton Mayor Lou Barletta. PoliticsPA rates Kanjorski as the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in Pennsylvania.

Finally, Manan Trivedi, a physician and Iraq veteran, appears for now to have narrowly edged Doug Pike, a former editorial board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer, for the right to challenge Rep. Jim Gerlach in a liberal-leaning district in southeastern Pennsylvania. But the narrow victory — just 600 votes — has prompted Pike to hold off on conceding as of early Wednesday morning, throwing this contest into limbo.

Maryanne Laager and Alex Roarty of PoliticsPA contributed to this report.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Front Page Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.